Everyone who lives in Dallas, Portland, Chicago and Los Angeles has a digital twin.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, operated by the University of California since 1943, includes a simulation project whose goal “is to build the comprehensive formal basis for simulation of large heterogeneous socio-technical systems as electric power networks, transport networks, communication networks. The focus is on developing supporting system design and analysis for national security oriented issues and critical infrastructures mentioned above.”

According to a story in Inside Bay Area, the lab builds computer simulations of living cities. “Everyone who lives in Dallas, Portland, Chicago and soon Los Angeles has a digital twin inside a computer at Los Alamos. These simulated people create traffic jams, they get sick, they pollute, they have real urban problems. Will a dollar spent on mass transit or highways buy less traffic congestion and smog? City planners come here to find out.”

They also produce EpiSIMS, a model of how an epidemic spreads thorugh a city.

According to Inside Bay Area, however, these projects are now at risk. “Over the course of 15 years those projects brought $100 million from government agencies into lab coffers. Suddenly that work is drying up.”